America's best airports
Ease is of utmost importance to travelers
What makes a good airport? It’s not a grand moment, local eateries, good loos or living room-like seating, though all of those features help.
It’s ease. Airports that are easy to get in and out of, whether that’s by car or transit — or bike — top travelers’ list, according to a new ranking that Hannah Sampson, Andrew Van Dam, and I worked on for The Washington Post.
“Travelers adore airports that are easy to get to (and through) above all else. People love light-filled spaces with soaring ceilings. Recent renovations help, too.”
Click below for the full analysis and methodology.
In the more than a year that I’ve written this newsletter, I agree with travelers: airports that are easy to use, no matter the design, rank among the best. That said, ease coupled with a soulless design is not ideal (looking at you, Dallas-Fort Worth).
That’s what I found when I surveyed U.S. airport-rail stations last year. The Metro station at Washington’s Reagan National Airport was the most popular by far — “short distance, easy signage,” as one X user put it.
Was there an architectural throughline? Not really. The airports that made the top 10 sport different styles, and range in age from a landmarked 1941 structure to a soaring mass-timber “big roof” that only opened last year.
And only one firm made the list multiple times: HOK designed three of the airports. Whether that is because of some unique understanding of passenger desires or simply the sheer number of airports it has worked on is unclear.
See what airports made the cut below.
Detroit Metro Airport, particularly the SmithGroup-designed McNamara Terminal that opened for Northwest Airlines in 2002.
Salt Lake City International Airport, designed by HOK and opened in 2020.
Indianapolis International Airport, designed by HOK and opened in 2008.
Albuquerque International Sunport, designed by Phillip Jacobson and BPLW Associates, and opened in 1989.
Rhode Island T.F. Green International Airport, designed by HNTB and opened in 1996.
Seattle Paine Field International Airport, designed by Fentress Architects and opened in 2019.
Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, Terminal 1 designed by Lyle George Landstrom and opened in 1962; expanded and renovated multiple times.
Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Terminal 2 designed by Cesar Pelli and opened in 1997.
Long Beach Airport, historic terminal designed by W Horace Austin and Kenneth Wing and opened in 1941; concourse by HOK, opened 2012; new ticketing hall by Corgan, opened 2022.
Portland International Airport, terminal core designed by ZGF Architects and opened in 2024.
Read the article in the WaPo and thoroughly enjoyed it.